CHARLOTTE, NC – Let’s start with some good news, because you’re probably not feeling very upbeat about your hometown football team right now.
The Detroit Lions have given up the most points, most yards, most passing yards and most first downs in the NFL, and after losing to the mediocre and injury-riddled Carolina Panthers
on Sunday Night Football it finally feels like their Super Bowl window has gone kaput.I’m not here to convince you otherwise. The Lions are still scoring plenty of points – they rank fifth in the NFL in that category and they haven’t even played their own defense. (Two other of the other top five, the Panthers and Buffalo Bills, have.)
But I am here to tell you the Lions are still viable playoff contenders, at least, about a quarter
of the way through the 2026 NFL season.
They’re 2-2 with a road trip to the 1-3 Arizona Cardinals up next, a bye week after that and the return of one difference maker on defense in Brian Branch expected shortly after.
That may not seem like much, not with the 4-0 Minnesota Vikings and 3-1 Chicago Bears looking like tanks in the division, but it’s actually not that bad compared to the plight of the rest of the NFC.
Just five NFC teams have winning records right now: The Vikings and Bears, the undefeated San Francisco 49ers and the 3-1 Seattle Seahawks and New York Giants.
I’d throw the Los Angeles Rams in the top playoff contender mix, too, though they came dangerously close to falling to 1-3 Sunday when they trailed the Philadelphia Eagles by 10 points late in the fourth quarter and coach Sean McVay summoned his team on the sideline to tell them they’re not in Australia anymore.
Kyren Williams scored a touchdown to cap a 98-yard drive, the defense got a three-and-out, Williams scored again and now all feels right in LA, at least until Josh Allen and the Bills visit next Monday night.
The Eagles? The Cowboys? The Packers? All those teams are 2-2 like the Lions with at least as many (and probably more) issues. The Packers don’t have an offensive line or a running game. The Cowboys’ defense is as bad as the Lions’, and the coaching is worse. Jalen Hurts and the Eagles' offense looks broken and injured.
Lions coach Dan Campbell likes to say it takes a quarter or so of the season for teams to find out who they are. And to borrow a phrase from the late, great orator Denny Green, these Lions are who we thought they were.
They’re an offense-first, defense-optional outfit that’s going to win games in shootouts. They need turnovers to survive on defense – they’re 2-0 in games they’ve forced a takeaway, and 0-2 in games they haven’t – and right now they don’t have many players who create them.
The Lions need more help for their secondary than Branch will provide coming off a torn Achilles, and I do expect general manager Brad Holmes will do something before the Nov. 10 trade deadline. It won’t be what you or I or most anyone who has seen them play thinks they need, but anything would be an upgrade at this point and that shouldn’t be hard to find.
I picked the Lions to start the season 2-2, so they’re about where I thought they’d be. The defense isn’t nearly as good as I expected, and I have questions about the offense, too. More on that in a moment.
But as Campbell said late Sunday night, there’s no reason to panic yet.
“I know this, we go into panic mode when we've got 13 games left and we're 2-2, that's not the right thing to do,” Campbell said. “I just don't believe that. I never have. I know there's frustration. Look, I'm frustrated. I know the players are frustrated. But it's also – and you're a few plays away, a few penalties away, whatever it is from now you're not in a two-score game and now you're back in control instead of having to fight your way back from the deficit we were under there.”
Flag day
So let’s talk about that deficit against the Panthers and how it came to be. The sieve of a defense, of course, but the Lions haven’t been nearly as detailed as they were early in Campbell’s days in Detroit, which began in 2021, and that’s why he blamed himself for Sunday’s loss.
The Lions had nine enforced penalties for 67 yards against the Panthers and 13 penalties overall, including some diver killers on offense and drive extenders on defense.
The Lions opened the game with nice gains on their first three plays, then Brock Wright was called for a false start and they settled for a field goal when they couldn’t dig themselves out of a first-and-15 hole.
Jahmyr Gibbs started the Lions’ second offensive series with a 10-yard run, but Juice Scruggs was called for a holding penalty that wiped out the play. Four snaps later, the Lions punted for the first time in the game.
Roger McCreary’s pass interference bailed the Panthers out of first-and-15 on a drive that ended in a touchdown, and late in the game the Lions had to try and convert a fourth-and-20 after a delay of game penalty and then a false start.
“It's 100% on me because it's one thing to say it, it's a different thing when it's not coming across,” Campbell said. “You can talk about being in a stressful environment, what goes on in those type of situations, but the bottom line is I'm not getting that across. I'm not getting it done right now because it's still happening, so I put that squarely on my shoulders -- that I'm not getting it coached properly. I'm the one who's going to get this fixed. I'm the one who is going to fix this whole discipline thing, whatever it takes.”
The Lions don’t have the same margin for error they did in the past, and that brings me to the second overlooked non-defensive reason for their struggles …
Ben Johnson’s brilliance
Johnson wasn’t the only reason the Lions made it to the NFC championship game in the 2023 season and then went 15-2 in 2024, but I think he’s an elite offensive play caller (in the McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Andy Reid class). No matter how good the Lions still are on offense, they miss his brilliance in practice and on the sideline.
I was talking to a fellow reporter after the game Sunday night and we both agreed we expected the Lions to score every time they touched the ball in 2023-24. Not just field goals but touchdowns, and that’s not the expectation anymore.
I get that teams are playing the Lions while positioning their safeties deeper and in more shell looks than before. It’s what Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs had to deal with during their string of Super Bowl appearances and it’s how the game has evolved as defenses try to keep teams from throwing deep.
Campbell’s eff-it approach, the Lions’ collective swag as the new kids at the party and the euphoria of the Lions finally being good contributed to that feeling, too.
But it didn’t matter the situation in those years: When the Lions had the ball, late in a game, in need of points, you could make a killing on Kalshi betting they’d succeed.
When the Lions got the ball down six points at their own 13-yard line with 2:06 to play Sunday, I never had the sense a comeback was in the cards. The Lions have to earn their points the hard way now. Their run game isn’t as efficient. Their instinct isn’t as killer. And while they’re still good enough to get their share, they’re not as efficient or explosive as the Lions of old.
I say all that to say, I figured the Lions would win 10 or 11 games at the start of the season and I still feel that way, albeit with less conviction.
They’ve got a lot that needs fixing, even things that aren’t broke, and fortunately plenty of time to get to work.
I’m not sure their upside is anything more than competitive playoff team now, and expectations should be higher than that. But if you get in the playoffs anything can happen and that’s where this season has to start.
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: It finally feels like Lions' Super Bowl window is gone, but look at NFC
